The Superposition

Ghost Sculptures:
Serendipity and the Importance
of Conversations With No Aim!
Lawrence Molloy
The painter Chuck Close said,
“Inspiration is for amateurs.”
This means not waiting for inspiration,
but rather engaging in processes and
actions from which interesting things
can arise. As a collaborative art maker,
I believe it is important to be open to
opportunities and conversations that
initially have nothing to do with your
work or ambitions. I also believe that
reading and engaging in research
outside of my field makes me a more
rounded person and better artist. Superposition
exposes me to conversations
that are varied and often nothing to do
with art; however, these often lead to
interesting and unexpected projects
and collaborations. Indeed, co-founding
The Superposition with Dave Lynch,
Mike Nix, Prof. Ben Whitaker and Andrew
Wilson was one such project/
collaboration that resulted from
independent research, conversations
and being loosely involved/helping-out/
fabricating on a number of science
and technology related projects over
a number of years.
The implied action in the saying
“Inspiration is for amateurs” gives a
clue to another truism, that involvement
in opportunities creates opportunities.
An example of this would be Ghost
Sculptures. Ghost Sculptures reveal
the beauty of natural and social history
objects by stripping away their weight,
colour and substance leaving only a
glimmering form to contemplate and
explore. They’re hidden within clear
shapes, such as cylinders and cuboids,
which when illuminated cause objects
made of light to magically appear within.
For the purposes of this piece what they
are is less important than how they work
and how they came to be.
I had been working as Artist in
Residence at the Museum of the
History of Science, Technology and
Medicine (HSTM) at the University
of Leeds since mid 2012 to develop
games, artworks and engagement
strategies that created a more visceral/
haptic engagement with the material
culture related to HSTM. This residency
had resulted from of an introduction to
the Museum’s director Claire Jones,
by the curator of the Stanley & Audrey
Burton Gallery who knew of the artworks
I had made with/for educational
institutions and the work I had been
doing with The Superposition. In 2013 I
was asked to work with them to create
artworks for Light Night that celebrated
the centenary of William and Lawrence
Bragg winning the Nobel Prize for “their
services in the analysis of crystal
structure by means of X-rays”
There had been a number of events
to celebrate the centenary including
a Café Scientifique lecture by Chris
Hammond that I had attended months
earlier. At this lecture he explained what
diffraction is and how the diffraction
patterns of X-rays produced a pattern
on a flat plate from which, using a
mathematical formula devised by the
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